DON

A tale: When the German philanthropist named Federman as his sole heir, Moinous immediately directed his lawyers to establish a lifetime stipend for the old guy upon wch he could draw up to 600DM per mo.

Moinous & Moinous have never met: We are, therefore, the ideal collaborators, the unadulterated figments of each other’s highest and best thoughts.

.... translated a passage which Mundo would have otherwise detected, recast it as a poem and sent it to him as mine. He shifted it to 2nd gear prose and returned it. I put rubber tires on the wagon bearing the pall. He put some moon behind the characters, just enough to cast weak shadow. I paved the road. He hid the heroes behind a rock. I made it a boulder. We argued "rock" or "boulder." The heroes started throwing pebbles at each other, then stones.

But the heroes kept missing the target.

We have always addressed each other formally, we have taken every advantage of every possible form of formal address when addressing each other.

But sometimes we address each other with the Sie or the Vous rather than just the You.

Our sole medium has been the United States Post Office.

Moinous cannot tell a lie.

... never played golf with the F-Man. Never watched him cook the fried egg he made for his kid before she biked off to school.

... never gazed at his wife entering a room in a white angora sweater, French heels.

One has heard that Federman is above average height, and rather portly, as, say, the hefty Reichschancellor Helmut Coleslaw.

One hopes we never meet.

If you shit on Federman know two things: one, that you are not the first. Second: Nor are you the last. Third: That Federman has the last word. Wch is: now I have you where I want you.

Please believe that for each other, neither exists.

His books are evidentiary.

Federman does not need to ask who is guilty.

When you play with Federman, keep your eye on the ball.

It is not him that one doesn’t trust, it’s one’s girlfriend.

If tonight is the night, Federman will be here.

Moinous sitting shiva.

Yskadal Yskade ...

In his wallet, on his person, Moinous carries the receipt.

What does Moinous say to the officer who has stopped him for speeding? "Put her there."

Federman’s literary theories were invented to ward off readers.

So far, Federman is unread.

Now is the time to let Federman off the hook.

So, what’s the hu-ha?

What is the key to Federstudies?

How many Feders fit in a box?

When Federman shits the tricolor lifts its sock.

If you want to know Federman, dear scholars of the future, do not read his books, do not visit him, his person or environs, do not read anything written about him.

Don’t listen to him! Moinous will tell you he rode into Paris in ‘45 on the back of an US ARMY tank. Not a word of this is true. He walked, every dirty step he walked.

Federman cannot stand the thought of his life.

Moinous never had a choice.

Federman speaks with authority.

Ready for what?

Prêt-à-porter?

"Finish your own sentence," is what Moinous might say.

Arrive? Depart?

Federman is a frog.

Frog backward is GO RF

Ray has brought the old guy at death’s door a bottle of scotch which the two men are drinking at a table as they watch a soccer match on a b&w tv. From time to time the old man snaps on a plastic mask and inhales oxygen from the green steel cylinder on the floor beside his chair. He offers Ray a sniff, Ray takes the mask, takes a whiff.

The ministries came to Ray’s door to pray with him. Ray held the storm door open but stood on the threshold so that they could not step into his rooms. Ray looked into their eyes until they got the message. Then he closed the door.

Boring to be sure. Others find him assaultive, others egregious. Still more find him post-modern and more yet see enormous flaming phalliolii with man-shaped semen leaping from the smoking blind tip in stunt parachutes. To be sure, we ourselves see him mounted, atop a fiery Pegasus, a bagel under his ass to soften the hard blow and scrape of the saddle, a horsey arrow of desire, on rockers yet once more oh ye laurels, yet once more yr myrtles, with ivy never sere.

I see London

I see France

I see Federman

qui mal y pense

To the mendicant scholar of future time who might seek a topic for his or her dissertation we recommend as a tempting felicitous analog to style Federman the letters of Mr. Sade home to Mrs. Sade from prison. Not that the one comes from the other but that both are derived from a similar place ... so similar indeed that Sade and Fede might well be sisters.

Hey sister can you spare a nickel?

or, ... elles n’ont pas toutes le même visage, sans être cependant dissemblables, ainsi qu’il convient à des soeurs.

Or, ... facies non omnibus una,

non diversa taman, qualem decet esse sororum.

Why so many?

One’s not enough.

Think of Federman as noodles, chips, rice ... a something which is only perceptible as an aggregate. Sand. Air. Blue. Water. Time. Gravel.

But don’t forget the tomato sauce for the noodles.

Federman in his person bespeaks the authority of his experience but not its sentiment. Sentiment is secondary, external, an after the fact category. Let others weep. Federman salutes.

Who is it coming to crush my berries?

Fede sitting with his dog. An hour passes. An hour ten minutes passes. One and one half hour passes. Two hours seventeen minutes passes. Man and dog are wide awake. You know, says Fede, I have named you well. The dog’s head drops to the rug in confirmation.

No one listens like Federman listens. He is all ears. His knees are ears. His balls are ears. His ears have ears. His eyes are ears. What the hell is he listening for with such ball-busting intensity? Is it for something he has heard before? The man needs brandy. Waiter. Bring a brandy.

One may not understand L’Oeuvre Federman by quotation.

Federman is always telling us his story.

Federman in Paris, holed up at fancy Hotel Lutetia on boulevard Raspail, paid for by his German publisher. He is writing a note to the Figment about the plaque mounted outside the building in tribute to the survivors of the concentration camps that were lodged at Hotel L when they first returned to Paris. "Such little cute French flags on it," he writes.

Scholars agree that quoting the master gets in the way of what they have to say about him.

I’ll scoop their ashes into the palm of my hand so they can tell me what happened ...

The sound of the saxophone depends on nothing.

It is what you haven’t got that counts.

Fed’s oeuvre as coverup.

I will dispute by signs only, without speaking, said he. The matters before us are so abstruse, so difficult and arduous, that words coming from the mouth of man will never be sufficient.

So then it was that everyone took heed, and listening with great silence, the man lifted his two hands high in the air, entwining his fingers, after the manner which they call, in china, the hen’s ass, and struck one hand against the other four times, then he opened his hands and struck one with the flat of the other until it made a clashing noise, then he struck four times, then twice, then he joined them, as if he had been devoutly sending his prayers to God.

Late at night, Moinous has stopped working. From his study he passes into the bright, orderly kitchen. From the drainboard he takes a glass and opens the sink tap to fill it. He stands at the sink, looking out through the window to the street, a patch of slick asphalt illuminated by a street lamp. He drinks some of the water. He stands at the window, looking toward the street. He does not see his reflection in the window. He does not acknowledge the figure of the man looking inward. Moinous watches the road.

...he followed their example and came under the conduct of an illustrious lantern ...

Say again?